When a magnolia tree’s roots grew into the water line running through Bennie and Annie Pearl Tillman’s Paris Street front yard, the retired couple couldn’t afford to have the leak fixed. Nor could they afford the water bill when their usage tripled. The problem got so bad that Bennie would turn the water off at night and turn it back on in the morning.
“With us being on a set income, we were actually running out of money at the end of the month,” Bennie Tillman told U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm when she visited his home on Tuesday. “Now we have money available at the end of the month.”
Tillman had gotten involved with the Athens Land Trust, serving on its West Broad advisory committee, and the nonprofit offered to make repairs through its Young Urban Builders program, which trains high school students to work in the construction industry. The ALT moved the water line, fixed leaks in the roof, replaced the heating and air with more fuel-efficient models, installed insulation in the attic and caulked around windows. Tillman said his water bill dropped from $170 a month to $60. His power and gas bills were also cut in half, saving him a total of about $200 a month.
Granholm—formerly the governor of Michigan—is touring the Southeast to promote the benefits of the $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, which includes $3.5 billion for weatherization, as part of a broader Biden administration initiative to fan out across red states and districts this summer touting its accomplishments. $1.18 million of that weatherization funding went to the ALT, which is partnering with the Athens-Clarke County government and another local nonprofit, ACTION Inc., on weatherization for low-income homeowners.
The ALT has been active for years in the West Broad neighborhood, roughly bounded by Broad and Baxter streets, Alps Road and Milledge Avenue. It’s a historically Black area full of longtime homeowners who experienced decades of disinvestment, but has recently been the focus of revitalization efforts. “We started hosting meetings to find out what the neighborhood needs,” ALT Executive Director Heather Benham said. “We didn’t know what we were going to do until [the residents] told us.”
ACC’s then-environmental coordinator Andrew Saunders, who is now director of the Central Services Department, suggested focusing their outreach on homeowners with unusually high water usage, which led the ALT to the Tillmans.
Granholm said she chose to visit Athens after the Energy Department reached out to grant recipients looking for homeowners who had benefited from weatherization programs and were willing to share their story. “A lot of this is just really getting the word out about weatherization and how much money people can save,” she said.
Driving in an electric vehicle, Granholm made stops in North and South Carolina before arriving in Athens, then headed for Atlanta, where she was scheduled to visit a Home Depot to highlight energy-efficient appliances, participate in a roundtable discussion on jobs the Biden administration has created in the clean energy sector, and meet with Mayor Andre Dickens. Tennessee was next on the itinerary.
Granholm said she is traveling in an EV to highlight President Joe Biden’s commitment to installing chargers along major corridors and in urban and rural areas where the private sector has not made the investment. Despite the current lack of charging stations in much of the Southeast, “if you have an app, you can plan out where the charges occur,” she said, mentioning that her group juiced up at a Walmart along the way.
The recently released weatherization funds weren’t available when the ALT repaired Tillman’s house, but they may fund future improvements, like insulation in the crawl space and rooftop solar panels. If the Tillmans ever replace their gas stove, Granholm urged them to take advantage of a program in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act that provides rebates of up to $800 on safer and less polluting induction stoves.
Bennie Tillman said his father built the Paris Street house himself in the 1940s using stones from an old airport around where the Beechwood Kroger is now. After serving almost 14 years in the Air Force, he returned to Athens and worked in food services at UGA for 22 years before retiring.
Bennie—who briefly studied journalism at Memphis State, now the University of Memphis—said the national press attention around a cabinet secretary visiting his home made him a bit emotional, but he was excited for the opportunity to highlight the weatherization program. “This is Paris Street, in the middle of the neighborhood,” he said. “This never happens. For all this to be here, I’m amazed.”
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